Reporting outcomes for different groups of the population

Ideally, each indicator should be able to be broken down by population characteristics such as age, sex, ethnicity, socio-economic status, disability status and by regional council and territorial authority areas. Most indicators include information by age, sex and ethnicity.

For the majority of indicators, disaggregation by socio-economic status or disability status is not possible because the indicators rely on data sources that do not collect this information, or the sample sizes are too small to allow such a breakdown. The way we present data for ethnic groups is constrained by the way it has been collected. Definitions of ethnicity are inconsistent across data sources and change over time.

Population and indicator data for regions and territorial authority boundaries is available in a regional social report section of the social report website. The regional section uses the same indicators as the national report, or aligned indicators where equivalent data is not available. Time series data is provided where possible.